Sunday, February 17, 2008

How to Create Raving Fans

Awesome customer service is very difficult to achieve, unless you meet a guardian angel who specializes in creating raving fans. Raving Fans is a short story about a new area manager who learns how to revolutionize his customer service by not just creating satisfied customers, but by creating raving fans. From the people who brought you The One Minute Manager and Who Stole My Cheese, Raving Fans will teach you more about creating evangelistic fans than any complicated 300 page book. It only takes a couple hours, but if you don't have the time, here are the key takeaways from the book...

-Goods aren’t sold, products and services are bought.-Satisfied customers are not enough.-Washrooms will tell you if a company cares about its customers.-Create a vision of perfection.-Decide what you want.-What people really want isn’t what they directly say.-Silence is not good.-Customer’s needs and wants change all the time.-If you don’t look after your people they won’t look after your customers.-Consistency creates credibility.-Limit the number of areas you want to make a difference in.-First consistently meet expectations, then constantly strive for 1% better. -All good customer service is a result of nifty systems.-To be consistent you have to have systems in place that your people are trained to follow.-Systems are predetermined ways to achieve the results.-Team members have to be flexible and change the systems when necessary.-People need to feel they belong to the group. They need to feel they’re important and that what they do, think, and say truly matters.-Great service is like giving your customer a big hug.